Greek creative duo Inva + Sla managed to capture a timelapse, plus a hyperlapse, with light painting, using a camera along with Mavic 2 Pro and Mavic 3 Cine drones. This is the first-ever drone light painting animation to be minted on Foundation’s marketplace as a non-fungible token (NFT) and one of the first nighttime hyperlapses to emerge from the Mavic 3 series now that the feature is finally available.
A Panasonic Lumix DC-GH5 camera with a Lumix 14-140mm lens was used to shoot the light painting timelapse on the ground. Additionally, the Mavic 3 Cine was launched and hyperlapse mode was activated to document the entire process.
‘Inspiration came initially from both traditional light painters, 3D artists and physical light art installations. There is a community of drone light painters and figures like Russell Klimas and the legend Reuben Wu that showed what can be done. We wanted to take further steps from that. So we not only shot a light painting with the help of a traditional camera, but also documented it with drone timelapse. Mavic 3 has excellent performance shooting long exposure photos in low light. We tested the limits of that by shooting in total darkness,’ Inva + Sla’s Athanasia Lykoudi tells DPReview.
A Godox 64LED light was mounted on the Mavic 2 and Lykoudi flew the drone in triangular formations above Triadi lake in Thessaloniki, Greece. The clip below illustrates how the Mavic 3 Cine performs well in low-light scenarios. The slowest shutter speed the drone offers is up to 8″ but the duo used a 6″ speed with 7 second intervals for this project.
Post-processing was completed with Adobe’s Lightroom, Photoshop and After Effects software. The clip inspired Alex Retsis to create the soundtrack that accompanies the video. You can view Inva + Sla’s body of work on their official website where they often experiment with new imaging technologies as they are released.
